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Special Relationship: Technology Sharing between the Intelligence Agencies
of the United States and United Kingdom

█ JUDSON KNIGHT

During World War II, the intelligence services of the United States and
the United Kingdom worked together in their efforts against the Axis
powers, particularly in Europe, and formalized the collaboration with
agreements in 1943 and 1946. Only in the postwar era did the United States
emerge as the dominant partner, and even then, many of the most important
technological advances in intelligence came from Britain. Among the most
visible examples of U.S.-British cooperation in the early twenty-first
century were joint military efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Behind these
undertakings lay a more extensive framework of cooperation in
intelligence, whose most significant known component is the Echelon global
surveillance system.

U.S. and British relations through 1945.
Great Britain is one of the only nations, other than Germany, against
which Americans have fought twice: first in the Revolutionary War
(1775–83), and later in the War of 1812. A century later, the two
nations allied against the Central Powers in World War I. The
"special relationship" between the Anglo-American powers
only became apparent in World War II, when Italy and Russia signed pacts
with the Nazis, and France readily capitulated to them. With Britain the
only European nation opposing Hitler, the United States—which did
not enter the war until two years after it began in
Europe—transferred considerable war materiel to the United Kingdom
through the Lend-Lease program.

At that time, Britain, with its vast empire, was still perceived as the
greater of the two powers, and in many regards, it maintained the lead.
Despite the legendary status that wartime U.S. intelligence efforts have
gained in retrospect, it was the British who scored the single greatest
intelligence breakthrough of the war: Ultra, the successful effort to
decipher German radio transmissions made with the Enigma machine. This in
turn gave the Allies an enormous advantage over the Germans, who only
learned—along with the rest of the world—about Ultra long
after the war was over.

Certainly the Soviets did not know about Ultra, or any number of other
secrets maintained by the democratic portion of the allied force. In a
stroke of good fortune for the postwar world, the instincts of the
anticommunist British prime minister, Winston Churchill, prevailed over
the desire of U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt to share information
equitably, and the two countries withheld the most sensitive information
from the Soviets. Dictator Josef Stalin did not even known about plans for
the Normandy invasion almost until the launch of the attack in June 1944.

Formal agreements and technology-sharing.
Midway of the war, the United States and United Kingdom formalized their
special relationship with the British-United States Agreement (Brusa) of
May 17, 1943. Brusa put into writing what had already existed in fact:
virtually complete sharing of signals intelligence. As members of the
British Empire, Australia and Canada—which also participated in the
Normandy invasion—later also signed on to the agreement.

These four nations, along with New Zealand, became parties to the United
Kingdom-United States of America Security Agreement, known as UKUSA,
signed on March 5, 1946. UKUSA greatly extended the provisions of Brusa,
allowing for standardized terminology, techniques, and procedures. After
1947, the U.S. National Security Agency took the lead in UKUSA, around
which grew the vast intelligence-gathering network known as Echelon. Only
in the late 1990s did Echelon become public knowledge.

Throughout much of the period before and during World War II, and for
several decades thereafter, Great
Britain played a powerful role in the technological dimension of this
arrangement. The British had, if not the lead, at least a position of
parity with the Americans where technological advances were concerned.
Particularly notable were the many advances they made in the technology of
naval warfare, both for aircraft carriers and the planes associated with
them. One outstanding example of this is the British Harrier jet, whose
unusual ability to hover made it an ideal craft for the U.S. Marines.

America's closest friend.
In the years since Vietnam, as anti-Americanism took hold in much of
western Europe and the developing world, Britain distinguished itself by
its virtually unfailing support for the United States. This became
particularly apparent following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks
on the United States. The United Kingdom made this support concrete, first
in the war against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, and later against
Saddam Hussein's dictatorship in Iraq. (Australia, too, supported
the United States with troops in both efforts, while Canada provided
troops for the Afghanistan war.) At the same time, British technological
advances remained a vital aspect of the partnership: in October 2002, for
instance, the U.S. General Services Administration awarded a contract to
British software developer Autonomy for a system to used in tracking
suspected terrorists.

█ FURTHER READING:

Aldrich, Richard J.
Intelligence and the War against Japan: Britain, America, and the
Politics of Secret Service.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.